About Me

I'm just me - a solitary wanderer who trekked across much of the world and recently retired to a small farm in the Ozarks.
My checkered past includes time spent as an Army officer, high school teacher and principal, real estate broker, child protection worker and administrator, and social worker with the U.S. military.
Over the years I have resided in a variety of places including Missouri, Virginia, Okinawa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Arizona. I have also traveled to Germany, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Belize, Guatemala, Taiwan, Guam, South Korea, Vietnam, and numerous islands in the Caribbean - including Cuba.
I have ridden in a Russian ambulance, hitch-hiked across Moscow late at night, fought an ostrich, celebrated New Year's at a street party in Hanoi, and bicycled across the Caribbean. My travels have taken me to Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Bolshoi Ballet, China Beach, and the White House kitchen.
The nine things in life that I am most proud of are my children: Nick, Molly, and Tim, and my grandchildren: Boone, Sebastian, Judah, Olive, Willow, and Sullivan.
Life has been very good to me indeed!

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Bring Out Your Dead!

by Pa RockCitizen Journalist

As thirteen old, white, male senators meet somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol Building to draft the Senate's version of Trumpcare, in absolute secrecy, their vainglorious leader at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is suddenly encouraging them to be a little more generous toward the medical needs of their fellow citizens than the House was with their bill. In fact, in a luncheon with some of those senators this week, Trump allegedly described the House version of the bill as being "mean" and "a son of a bitch."

Not surprisingly, many Republican members of the House were not amused. They crawled out on a limb to support a measure that would bring physical and economic harm to many of their constituents, and then were shocked to find Dear Leader was behind them sawing through that limb.

The Senate's version of Trumpcare is due out any day. It will not be slowed down and possibly amended through committee hearings, but instead will go directly to the floor of the Senate for an up-or-down vote through a fast-track procedure called "Rule 14." Senators will not have adequate time to digest the intricacies and nuances of the bill, much less seek input from constituents or stakeholder groups.

Trumpcare is being drafted in secret and will be shoved down the throats of Americans without so much as a discussion. It is American politics at its absolute worst. It's going to be bad - so bad that even Trump is nervous about the havoc that the new plan (or, more accurately, lack of a plan) could reap.

Somehow, the Senate version of Trumpcare, or "The American Health Care Act," does not sound very "American."

But Donald Trump is primarily focused on saving his own skin as the Russia investigations intensify, and Republican zealots are galloping free rein. Today they are focused on destroying the Affordable Care Act. After they drive a stake through the heart of that socialist aberration, then they can shift their focus to dismantling the Great Society and then, finally, the New Deal.

When health care, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are all gone, what a wonderful world this will be. The rich can keep their money, holed up in their gated communities and private estates - while the rest of us enjoy the lives that our ancestors led in the fourteenth century as the Black Plague swept through Europe.